Cologny (Switzerland) (AFP)

Hitler's "Mein Kampf" book and a 4,500-year-old peace treaty - the world's oldest - illustrate the eternal struggle of men between the fascination for war and the yearning for peace.

These books are among 135 manuscripts, books, documents and other valuable works presented in an exhibition held near Geneva at the Martin Bodmer Foundation.

Several pages of Leo Tolstoy's original manuscript "War and Peace" were allowed to leave Russia for the first time since the publication of the book in the 1860s.

Each of the yellowed pages, covered with the Russian writer's elegant and dense script in Cyrillic, full of barred words and notes in the margin, was insured for 725,000 euros.

Curator Pierre Hazan told AFP he was delighted to have included "this treasure that belongs to Russia but also to the world heritage".

- "Abomination" -

The book, whose plot takes place on the eve of the decisive battle of 1812 between Napoleon's soldiers and the Russian army, perfectly illustrates the exhibition whose message is that "the war is not a part of 'failures but an abomination,' he said.

In the basement of the Foundation, declarations of war and propaganda documents are exposed in soft light, alongside peace treaties and diplomatic messages.

We can thus see the original of the declaration of war of France to Prussia in 1870 and a reproduction of a map of Europe signed in 1939 by Joseph Stalin and the German Minister of Foreign Affairs Joachim von Ribbentrop, defining the spheres of influence of the two countries.

But the peace treaties could also be engraved in the terracotta, as evidenced by the "foundation nail" of King Entemena, on which is inscribed in cuneiform agreements of brotherhood with King Uruk around 2430 BC. in what was then Mesopotamia (now Iraq).

Elsewhere, a row of windows presents an impressive collection of peace treaties, including the original, decorated with a red wax seal, the decree of ratification in 1648 of the Peace Treaties of Westphalia, which ended the War of Thirty Years in Europe.

Mr Hazan, who works as a mediator at the Geneva Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, believes that in the global context of migration and conflict, it is time to "step back and reflect on the historic moment we are in the process of live".

- "Historical charge" -

The exhibition, organized with the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), also wants to celebrate the achievements of the multilateral system, which is increasingly called into question.

The exhibition, which will run until March 2020, shows the famous "Nansen passport".

The Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who was the first High Commissioner for Refugees of the League of Nations, ancestor of the UN, set up in 1922 this document for stateless persons and refugees, in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution .

"For me, the Nansen passport is perhaps the most beautiful in this exhibition in terms of multilateralism," said Hazan.

The curator of the exhibition recalls the reluctance of the restorers to work at the same time on works as opposed as "Mein Kampf" - an original edition signed by the author - and "Le Journal d'Anne Frank", also in original edition.

"They said to themselves: It's not possible to work on these two books simultaneously, so they decided to treat them separately."

The two works are exposed to two places far apart from each other.

"I believe these books have a historical charge, they radiate something, positive waves and negative waves" as in human nature, he said.

© 2019 AFP